Standing outside the rental house, Qin Zhe, with his excellent psychological fortitude, stepped forward. “Head of the Family, as per your orders, our men have been monitoring this building around the clock. During this time, Mr. Shen remained inside and never left.”
Xu Zhiyuan’s eyes were bloodshot. He crushed the paper, thin as a cicada’s wing, into his palm. Closing his eyes, he barely managed to regain his senses.
Shen Qiuxun had simply vanished into thin air…
Could he have evaded the 24-hour, no-blind-spot ‘protection’ and left without a trace? It was possible.
He was an enigma. Originally, just an ordinary Beta. Yet he could stand against an Alpha without being outmatched, remained unaffected by his Mental Coercion, knew how to use a gun, pick a lock, and possessed a photographic memory… Mysterious and powerful, drawing people in to uncover his secrets.
It was possible he had eluded everyone and left… but why? Why did he leave? Why did he leave him? Hadn’t Shen Qiuxun promised him? Where did it go wrong? Where exactly?
A tinnitus, like a festering bone disease, pierced through his eardrums, threatening to churn his brain into pulp. Xu Zhiyuan clutched his head and violently coughed out a mouthful of blood. The blood stained the concrete floor, reflecting his hunched silhouette.
A long, long time later, he looked up, maintaining a strained rationality. His voice trembled. “Qin Zhe, go find Ellie.”
Shen Qiuxun was so close with Ellie, he must have said something.
Even if he hadn’t told him, he would have told his trusted Sister Ellie.
Ellie arrived quickly. She didn’t understand why Xu Zhiyuan had called for her, but she vaguely sensed it was likely about Shen Qiuxun. Ever since Shen Qiuxun had inexplicably transferred her money a few days ago, there had been absolutely no word from him.
In the living room of the rental house, everyone was silent and terrified, as if helplessly awaiting the countdown to a nuclear bomb’s detonation.
“You’re saying Shen Qiuxun is missing?” Ellie was surprised. Subconsciously, she covered the Lightbrain Chip on her arm.
Xu Zhiyuan stared at her intently, his gaze like a sharp knife peeling back layers, trying to see through Ellie’s disguise. But there was none; her surprise didn’t seem feigned. The suspended heart in his chest plummeted into an abyss.
He tightly clutched the half-wrist guard in his hand. “He didn’t say anything to you?” he asked in a deep voice, a barely perceptible expectation hidden deep within his bloodshot eyes.
“No,” Ellie replied. She had thought of many things, but she, too, didn’t understand why Shen Qiuxun had left without a word. She looked cautiously at the Alpha before her. “Four days ago, he transferred me thirty credits, left a ‘take care,’ and then no more messages.”
“I thought he was with you.” An Alpha’s possessiveness was notoriously severe. It made perfect sense that he wouldn’t allow Shen Qiuxun to message her.
“Take care?” Xu Zhiyuan’s mouth twisted into a bitter smile. Shen Qiuxun had even left Ellie money and a ‘take care.’ What about him, then? What did he count as? Had Shen Qiuxun simply patted his backside and left the moment he himself had departed?
Xu Zhiyuan clutched his head in agony. His raging pheromones felt like they were about to burst through his internal organs and explode. “You can go.”
Ellie paused. She was thinking about where Shen Qiuxun might have gone, and also worried that in Xu Zhiyuan’s current state, if he found him, he would torture him. After a moment’s thought, she spoke softly, “That night you were locked in the Interrogation Room, Shen Qiuxun rushed to save you. He said he liked you.”
She hoped, prayed, that Shen Qiuxun had run far away. A crazed Alpha was terrifying.
Xu Zhiyuan’s eyes trembled, but he didn’t look up. “Escort Miss Ellie out.”
His subordinate led Ellie away. The door closed. The rental house was empty, utterly silent. It hadn’t been like this before.
Shen Qiuxun hadn’t taken a single thing that belonged to him. Nothing at all. He had heartlessly cast everything aside, like shedding a burden, joyfully embracing freedom.
Xu Zhiyuan laughed through his rage. His grass-green eyes were overcast with dark clouds, blood-red veins creeping in. He ground his teeth. “Liar… Liar.”
Qin Zhe stood respectfully at the doorway, trying his best to minimize his presence. After a long while, he heard his superior grind out through clenched teeth:
“Find him.”
The voice was so cold it made one’s blood run cold.
Xu Zhiyuan hadn’t closed his eyes for days. Now, his eyes were rimmed red, a precursor to a ferocious beast’s breakdown.
Under his orders, the entire planet was turned upside down. Every street, every household, even some underground passages unknown to outsiders were meticulously searched by his people.
Half a month passed just like that. Nothing.
It was clean, as if the person had never existed.
Xu Zhiyuan returned once more to this small, dilapidated rental house. He walked into Shen Qiuxun’s former bedroom and closed the door. He saw the unchangingly bleak scene within. In his vision, a silhouette seemed to sit by the bedside. He took a step forward, and it vanished like smoke.
The string of his spirit, drawn to its absolute limit, finally snapped. His vision went black, and he collapsed, stiff as a board.
In a daze, he seemed to have a vivid, lifelike dream.
Their first meeting. Shen Qiuxun had looked over at him under the stark white light.
Continuous rain fell upon them. He picked Shen Qiuxun up, his lips brushing the small mole beneath his lip.
Then came the embrace in the Interrogation Room, the fireworks in the Square.
Shen Qiuxun looking back at him while standing beside Jace.
The detestable Alpha from the BBQ Shop, holding Shen Qiuxun’s favorite Roasted Sand Rat, standing on the stairs and looking down with love in his eyes. And Shen Qiuxun, smiling as he looked back.
It was outside that empty concrete house. Shen Qiuxun’s lazy voice, wrapped in the biting cold wind, reached his eardrums:
“Alphas are temperamental, arrogant, can’t take care of others at all, their Glands are unstable… Of course, Betas are better…”
Shen Qiuxun walked side-by-side with a strange man, moving faster and faster, faster and faster, until they vanished completely.
Xu Zhiyuan jolted awake with a start. It was already daylight. He looked up. The room was silent. An endless emptiness enveloped him again. Coldness froze his entire body. A hole seemed burned through his heart. The immense pain nearly suffocated him.
A long moment passed.
Xu Zhiyuan forced his body up, opened the door, and walked out. He looked at Qin Zhe, who was waiting with bowed head outside the door. Qin Zhe quietly stepped forward and activated his Lightbrain. “The unlicensed Starship forces at the spaceport are a tangled mess. Our people intercepted two ships that left this planet in recent days but found no trace of Mr. Shen. The other routes are still under investigation. We will immediately enforce a lockdown if there’s any news.”
“Additionally… the people from the Capital Planet are pressing for your return. The matters there still await your decision.”
Xu Zhiyuan tightly clutched the paper ball in his hand and stared at the dark stairwell entrance. He remembered the last time he had waited here for someone: awkward, bitter, expectant. Various emotions mixed together like an overturned spice rack.
How he wished that at this very moment, Shen Qiuxun would walk up from below just like that time, reach up to pull down the Scarf covering the lower half of his face slightly, and those calm black eyes would look over, asking him with disdain what he was sitting here for.
But there was nothing. Nothing at all. No matter how many times he looked, the stairwell remained empty.
“Tell me… why did he leave? Abandon everything, without a single lingering attachment?”
Qin Zhe carefully considered for a moment, then ultimately decided to keep his mouth shut. How would he know? He was baffled too.
“I don’t understand. I don’t understand…”
Xu Zhiyuan would have preferred it if Shen Qiuxun had approached him with ulterior motives from the start—for profit, as a spy, or wanting his life. Whatever the reason, as long as his heart sought something, he would eventually entangle with him for a while longer.
What he feared was that Shen Qiuxun wanted nothing at all.
Appearing inexplicably by his side, then vanishing just as inexplicably. Like a dream, elusive and unfathomable.
Xu Zhiyuan tilted his head back. A glimmer of light shimmered in his bloodshot eyes. A long moment later, a single, murky tear, laced with threads of blood, rolled down. His voice was hoarse, like tearing away a piece of flesh still connected to the heart by sinew.
“Set course. Return to the Capital Planet.”
Forget. As long as he forgot everything, he could prove he didn’t need Shen Qiuxun.
Taking back control of such a massive conglomerate meant an endless list of things to do. From the moment of departure, Xu Zhiyuan didn’t stop, operating like a high-precision machine, never letting his thoughts stray from work for a single moment.
He needed to purge some of the old guard and bring in people he trusted. New collaborations required his personal presence. Sometimes, he would be so exhausted he’d fall asleep involuntarily. After a fleeting, short dream, the endless pain would surge back, flooding into his limbs and bones, making him want to dig out that disobedient heart and crush it.
Qin Zhe and a few trusted confidants lived in trepidation, barely surviving under the increasingly terrifying pressure.
Another week passed. The few flight routes from the Trash Planet had been meticulously investigated. They did discover a few Betas with suspicious movements, but upon confirmation, none were the person they were looking for.
No trace whatsoever.
Qin Zhe stood outside the office with the file, opening and closing it. On the surface, the Head of the Family seemed to have emerged from the shadow of his heartbreak. But in reality, as his confidant, Qin Zhe knew better.
From that day until now, the Head of the Family’s spirit had been walking a tightrope, one misstep away from a full mental breakdown. He barely slept. The pressure increased daily. He closed the file, deeply worried: the Head of the Family’s Bonding Heat was approaching.
Although they had assembled the top medical teams in the entire interstellar space to develop a Specific Medicine…
As the old saying went, a heart’s illness needs a heart’s medicine.
He feared that the more the Head of the Family suppressed things now, the more it would be like a planet exploding when the day of eruption truly came.
They would all be finished together.
He took a deep breath, composed his appearance, and walked in with the file, bowing his head. “Head of the Family, this is the investigation report on the few smuggling routes. We… found no trace of The One.”
The atmosphere in the room was oppressive. The constantly compressing, liquor-scented pheromones were on the verge of igniting at a single spark.
After a long silence, Qin Zhe heard a low, indifferent voice. “Hm.”
It was as if only a silent husk sat there, terrifyingly hollow.
Qin Zhe withdrew. Two steps out, his legs suddenly went weak. He had to brace himself against a nearby desk just to steady himself.
A fuse had been lit. The day of explosion was inevitable.
On the Capital Planet, a torrential rain poured down.
Xu Zhiyuan’s Bonding Heat arrived without warning. He locked himself in a room in the Castle. The Specific Medicine was just outside the door.
More than a dozen A-Rank Alpha bodyguards walked in and were carried out horizontal.
Jiang Shiyan held the fort at the company. Xiang Yuan stood outside the door, at his wit’s end. In the end, Qin Zhe, fully armed with the Specific Medicine, went in to try his luck.
The room was pitch black. The liquor-scented pheromones constantly compressed and solidified. The moment one entered, they could feel a burning sensation on their skin from contact with the air.
Suddenly, a fierce gust of wind swept through, lifting a corner of the heavy curtains. In that split second of light, Qin Zhe saw the full extent of the room. A hand locked around his throat, slamming him viciously into the wall. It was almost like being struck by a Spaceship moving at high speed. His internal organs felt displaced. He helplessly coughed up a mouthful of blood.
And in that second, he remembered why the room felt familiar—it was a one-to-one replica… of that small house on the Trash Planet.
The table, the cabinet, the bed, and the various fabrics piled on the bed—who knows how the suffering Alpha had tormented them.
Trembling, he opened his eyes and met a pair of terrifying, blood-red eyes.
They were fierce, bloodthirsty, yet also despairing and helpless.
“Xunxun… Xunxun… where’s my Little Xun?”
